


Paralyzed

by spnstuck



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Assassination, Assassins & Hitmen, Blood, Clubs?, Drama, Espionage, F/F, Graphic Violence, Gun Violence, Implied Sexual Content, Implied Smut, Post-Canon, Slow Burn, Subterfuge, Surprise Kissing, There's plot this time!!, Tracer's terrible fashion, Violence, blizzard will pry widowtracer from me with cold dead hands before i stop shipping it, brief mention of sombra and reaper too, enemies falling in love...you heard me, no offense emily, only pertaining to the fact that this was written before the overwatch christmas comic, this fic also takes stock from the idea that lena and amelie knew each other before brainwashing, tracer has some issues, ya girl actually TRIED this time
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-28
Updated: 2017-11-08
Packaged: 2018-07-27 06:08:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7606669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spnstuck/pseuds/spnstuck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Widowmaker has a target at a club. Things get decidedly harder when she sees someone familiar. </p><p>This started as a fic based off the prompt “whenever you saw me you’d shout ‘WHOOOOOOOOO’ really loudly and then do finger guns at me before walking off to god knows where” au but then, as one does, I accidentally wrote a fic about assassination, Tracer's crocs being unsuitable for battle, Widowmaker being unable to handle Tracer in general, etc. Enjoy.</p><p>[Update: this fumbled itself into being a multi-chapter fic?? Thanks everyone for joining the ride! Your comments and kudos are much appreciated. I love getting the opportunity to develop this fic and the relationship that's established between them)</p><p>(sorry for the wait!!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

               Clubs were in her top five least favorite places to kill someone, Widowmaker decided. Not as bad as boats, but close to offices and Costco.

               It was too loud, too crowded, too many people packed into one suffocating area. Kills here were more about espionage than sniping, and Widowmaker had to admit that it wasn’t her forte. You simply couldn’t get a clean shot with so many people moving at once.

               And she felt naked without her rifle. Only a knife slipped into the dark blue pocket of her dress, and a small pistol strapped just about where the blue fabric slit away from her thigh. Exposed, honestly, but this mission called for it.

               She had spotted her target a few minutes ago: Nathaniel Hosterly, a 43-year-old businessman who lived in the heart of Los Angeles. When Reyes had dropped his file on Widowmaker’s desk three days, she hadn’t bothered to ask additional questions: Reyes suspected that Hosterly had been passing Talon intel to Overwatch agents, Sombra had confirmed those suspicions for fact during a stealth mission, and now Widowmaker was here, watching him drape a hand across a woman’s thigh, as she planned out the best way to get him alone. The only difficult part would be deciding whether to use the gun or the knife (a matter of messiness weighed against loudness).

               She glided across the thrumming dance floor, careful not to bump into anyone and draw attention to herself. She plucked a flute of blue liquid from a silver tray (only for appearances; she didn’t drink anything she didn’t mix herself, on principle.). Hosterly’s hand had slid up the other’s woman thigh, circling around her hips now. The woman didn’t look particularly interested, but then again, expressions weren’t Widowmaker’s forte either.

               Regardless, he stopped when Widowmaker reached his couch. “Can I help you?” He asked. In his mind, Widowmaker guessed she was already sprawled on his bed, but that was fine.

               “ _Excusez-moi,_ a young _mademoiselle_ sent this for you,” she said. Pushing the French accent always seemed to work, even though Widowmaker hated having to butcher her own language.

               His eyes flitted across the room. “Which one?”

               “This one,” she purred, taking the seat immediately next to him.

               He took the drink from her. “Tell her I send my regards.”

               “I’ll be sure to let her know,” she replied, slipping a smile across her face. It had taken a lot of practice to be able to react so automatically. The problem was that people were always _doing_ something, so it started to look out of place when Widowmaker forgot to act.

               “Nathaniel Hosterly,” he said, extending one hand.

               “Angelica.” It was the first thing that came to mind.

               “Do you have a last name?” He asked.

               “Spend time with me and maybe you’ll find out,” she murmured, rolling her shoulders back and leaning closer meaningfully. _Dieu,_ this was embarrassing.

               “I can’t say I’ve seen you here before,” the same blonde woman interrupted. She waved a hand across the crowd. “Most people are regulars.”

               “I am in town, visiting my sister,” Widowmaker said evenly. Best to give a vague response that they would probably forget later.

               “Is she here too?” Hosterly asked.

               “ _Non,_ she was not feeling well and had to leave.”

               “That’s a real shame.”

               “I am just relieved that I could stay.”

               “Strangely, I feel the same way.”

               Throughout this conversation, she had scooted closer and stretched her legs across the ottoman. The blonde girl had drifted away once she had realized that Widowmaker had taken her place.  The plan was going well, even better than expected, Widowmaker decided. She hadn’t anticipated getting his attention this quickly.

               Then Widowmaker blinked, and there was another girl in front of them. Suddenly there, even though she definitely hadn’t been before.

               She looked _odd_ too. It wasn’t as though her spiked hair and loud neon tights were out of place for the club, but her oversized jacket zipped over an equally loud neon dress certainly stuck out as unusual. Nathaniel Hosterly seemed to think so too, and his eyes widened even more when she addressed him directly.

               “Is this seat taken?” She piped, an obnoxiously strong English accent coloring her words. She talked loud enough that Widowmaker didn’t have to lean closer to hear, even amongst the blaring dance music.

               “I suppose not,” Hosterly replied drily. He seemed to have recovered from her abrupt appearance; now it looked like he wanted nothing more than for her to leave. Widowmaker couldn’t help agreeing. It would be impossible to murder him with this girl in the way. But it didn’t look like she was intent on letting them alone now.

               “Whattaya think of this music, loves?” She directed the question to the both of them, but now Widowmaker didn’t feel so charming anymore.

               “I’m going to see if the bar has anything interesting,” she announced, already standing up to leave.

               “Let me know if they do!” The neon girl replied, delivering a salute. Widowmaker grimaced. Hosterly looked thoroughly disappointed.

               She took a seat at the bar, but ignored any expectant looks from the bartender. Here, she had a good vantage point of where her target sat stiffly on the couch. British Girl was still there, yapping incessantly. It was a setback, but one that Widowmaker could manage. The mission had been going well so far; it only made sense that something would hitch eventually. _Especially at a club_ , Widowmaker noted.

               She would continue to keep tabs on him as the night progressed; maybe Tights Girl would prove to be an asset and convince him to leave early. It’d be easier to get to him outside, anyway, where there were less people, and a few significant glances to his car would do all the talking necessary in order to convince him that they should leave alone together.

               Now Hosterly was alone again, she observed with satisfaction. Yapping Girl was nowhere to be seen. She melted back into the crowd, stepping easily to the beat of the music, blending in seamlessly-

               “ _Wooooooo!”_ A small spot had opened up in the dancers, but only briefly before it was fully occupied by the same girl from earlier. Even though they were only separated by a few feet, she pointed to Widowmaker like they were friends spotting each other from across the room.

               They were not friends spotting each other from across the room.

               “ _Wooooooo! I love this song!”_ She yelled, and a few cheers sparked around them in response.

               Widowmaker felt the corners of her mouth twist into a scowl, the first unintentional expression of the night. It deepened when the girl grabbed her arm with a surprisingly strong grip and tugged her forward. “ _Dance with me!”_

“ _Pardon,”_ Widowmaker hissed, wrenching her arm away. “I have to use the restroom.”

               She stalked her way towards the back of the club and slipped behind the women’s door. Widowmaker checked her makeup, gun, knife in the mirror and sighed through gritted teeth. The girl was annoying. Surely she didn’t expect to spend time with Widowmaker all night? She didn’t assume they were _friends_ or anything, right? Widowmaker suspected that would be unusual behavior even for regular humans.

               “One shot, one kill,” she muttered under her breath. It was a comforting mantra that she liked to revert to whenever she encountered a difficult job: a reminder that a headshot would always finish the task if necessary. Her watch read 1:23 in the morning. There was still time, but less room for error now. Less room for annoyances.

               The dance floor was less crowded now, though the DJ was still taking requests. Hosterly had his back to her; she watched him raise the blue drink to his lips slowly.

               _“It’s starting to get hot in here,_ ” Widowmaker would say. “ _I think it is time I go home.”_ At this moment she would meet his gaze, challenging him.

               _“Why would I want to know?”_ He would ask playfully.

               _“In case you wanted to join,_ ” she would whisper. Then she would lead him to her car, at the back of the parking lot, and kiss him, and hold his head to her chest with one hand while she pulled the trigger with the other.

               “ _Wooooooo!”_ _Incroyable._ She popped into view again, this time directly at Widowmaker’s side. “You still owe me a dance, love!” She giggled.

               “I owe you nothing,” Widowmaker spat, swerving around the dance floor in an effort to lose the girl. This was starting to pose a problem. Time was sliding away, and focusing on weaving between sweaty bodies meant that it was more difficult to keep an eye on Hosterly. The girl was too conspicuous too; every time she yelled to Widowmaker, the assassin felt a few more faces turn in her direction, which meant that a few more people would be able to attest to the fact that they saw a tall, beautiful woman taking long strides across the dance floor on the night of Nathaniel Hosterly’s death. “I am trying to talk to my friend on the couch.”

               “Why’d you come to a club if you don’t want to dance?” Coat Girl asked, a strident whining tone now injected into her voice. Widowmaker caught her gaze accidentally, and something sparked there, and held.

               She was suddenly very, very sure that this girl knew why she was here.

               Widowmaker had learned to trust her instincts over her years with Talon. She trusted herself before she trusted anyone else, even when it came to those she had betrayed Overwatch with. At the moment, her instincts were whispering across her spine, plucking goosebumps onto skin that no longer understood the changes in temperature.

               But it wasn’t as though she could kill this girl now. The club was too busy, and she didn’t have a high enough view to ensure that another person wouldn’t interfere.

               Her priority was Hosterly. Reyes had handed Widowmaker the envelope, and she would follow through. She could kill the girl later.

               She neared Hosterly’s table, and snatched his eye from where it had wandered onto a dancer. He grinned, she waved, and then there was The Girl.

               Though this time, Widowmaker didn’t have enough time to react before the girl reached up and used the front of her dress to pull her into a kiss.

               A rough, mashed kiss that paralyzed Widowmaker, stunned her into where she stood. Something both hot and cold erupted in the pit of chest, unfamiliar and distasteful, but also intoxicating and heavy. Something she feared because she didn’t understand.

               This kiss was over before Widowmaker could think to pull away. The girl stumbled from standing on her toes, and Widowmaker, knocked off balance, had to take a step back in order to regain it.

               “Are you _drunk?”_ She snapped, throwing a quick glance to Hosterly. Shock scribbled across his face.

               But then the girl only grinned and leaned closer again. “Trying to crash another party, love?” She whispered, and recognition slammed into Widowmaker like another poisonous kiss.

               Tracer whistled, saluted, and blinked out of sight.

               Widowmaker wiped her mouth, lips still numb with shock. She turned to Hosterly.

               “Do you-do I-should I?” He stammered and patted his wallet, checked his pockets, looked to the door. Widowmaker’s window was nearing closure.

               “I do not know her,” Widowmaker growled. Restlessness and panic, real panic, stirred in her limbs. Someone had known she would be here. She was being watched. There was another sniper training their sights on her temple right now. Theories and ideas fluttered across her mind, so many that Widowmaker couldn’t latch onto a single one to prepare for.

               “Oh, well, in that case…I’m sorry, that must have been some kind of surprise.” He said, and his hands relaxed at his sides.

               “ _Oui,_ it was,” she replied. She sat next to him again, but this time without leaning back. She would not allow herself to rest while she was being watched. Not that she could, if she tried. There was a flash of blue light near the speakers, but it was only the reflection from a strobe light. Widowmaker forced herself to exhale. She needed to think clearly.

               She never forgot a missed target. The fact that Tracer had escaped the first time was unacceptable. At the time, Widowmaker hadn’t known the girl, but she had certainly done her research when she returned to Talon. Tracer worked with Overwatch, and she was exceptionally hard to kill. Her blinking made her difficult to hit, and her rewind ability forced even mortal wounds to vanish from her skin. And now she was here, hunting Widowmaker, which indicated that Overwatch itself was hunting her.

               “-return to Spain. Ah-Angelica, are you listening?” Hosterly’s voice broke through her thoughts. He was staring at her.

               “ _I’m sorry,_ I was still distracted,” she replied stiffly. “I need fresh air. Would you like to come?” She tossed a smile towards him.

               “The club doesn’t let you take drinks outside,” Hosterly replied, “But I’ll be there in a minute.” He returned the smile, though on his face it edged towards a smirk.

               Widowmaker stepped outside of the club, a cool breeze immediately picking up the end of her ponytail. Tracer may decide that the danger had passed when she no longer saw Widowmaker and Hosterly together. She could believe that, through her appearance, she had threatened the Talon agent into leaving. _She could be aiming her pistols right now._ Widowmaker stepped behind a decorative pillar that stood by the entrance, just in case. From here, she still had a clear enough view of Hosterly.

               Her fingers brushed against the holster on her thigh, where the cool metal of the gun scraped her nails. A deft turn of her wrist, and the pistol slipped from its latch into her hand. She had disabled the cameras before entering the club early in the evening, and the hollow where she stood now was cloaked in enough darkness to prevent bystanders from describing her.

               A soft calm settled in her mind as she lifted the gun. Overwatch may be watching her, but they couldn’t stop a bullet in midair. She could take care of Tracer later.

  _One shot, one kill. I have never felt more alive._ It was always true.

She sensed the girl more than she saw her. In a single, fluid movement, Tracer had wrapped one arm across Widowmaker’s throat, and another tangled around her shooting arm. Widowmaker couldn’t aim, couldn’t pull the trigger, couldn’t step forward or back as Tracer’s grip tightened. She tasted fear: hot, rolling, coppery. The chronal accelerator dug painfully into her back. Air struggled to reach her lungs.

“Now what did you think you were going to get away with there?” Tracer’s accent was breezily optimistic even while Widowmaker clawed at Tracer’s forearm. She couldn’t reach the knife hidden in her dress.

But then she noticed Tracer’s feet, and her stupid, stupid Crocs. With one foot, Widowmaker smashed her heel through the Croc’s holes, and Tracer’s hold loosened as she yelped in surprise. With her free arm, Widowmaker jabbed Tracer’s stomach with her elbow, and straightened her arm.

She fired two shots down the middle, saw Hosterly’s body jerk and slump to the couch.

She emptied the rest of her barrel into the crowd. Best to make it look like a random act of violence, a mass shooting, instead of an intentional assassination. Screaming erupted from within in the club; people began to stream towards the front door.

               “You’re a monster.” Hate tore through Tracer’s voice, coming out ragged and raspy. Tears tracked down her face, staining it shiny and red. “I hate you. _I hate you.”_

“Yes,” Widowmaker said.

               Faster than she could process, Tracer’s arm shot out, and she punched Widowmaker across the face. Pain exploded on the bridge of her nose, and dark blood gushed over her chin. It was probably broken. She staggered backwards, but her eyes were clear. She caught Tracer’s next blow, crumpled her hand around the girl’s fist until she shrieked and yanked it back. Tracer should have aimed higher: a broken nose was annoying, but it didn’t keep her from fighting. Her heartbeat pulsed in her ears, pumping dizzying waves of oxygen towards her brain. This needed to end; the second trickle of fear that day burst in her throat.

               With her other hand, she wiped under her nose, felt the warm liquid slide down her palm. Disgusting, but she would take a long bath later. She sidestepped Tracer’s swing, smashing her hand across her eyes, smearing the blood there, blinding her. _Disgusting._ She almost felt bad for the girl.

               Though not bad enough to slow down. She sprinted to her car, fighting the wave of people still trying to leave the parking lot. Most of the spots were empty now, except for a few girls huddling inside their cars, phones pressed to their ears. The police would be here soon.

               Widowmaker knew Tracer had probably just recalled as soon as she regained her senses. That was what the oversized coat was for: to hide her chronal accelerator. She could have picked one that better matched her outfit.

               Nevertheless, Widowmaker wasted no time by looking behind her; she dove in and out of alleyways, backtracking, swerving, even once switching to a car she’d parked a few blocks away the week before, just in case (Though the idea had been Sombra’s).

               An hour later, and she radioed into Talon headquarters, requesting the helicopter to pick her up.

               Gradually, her heartbeat slowed and the adrenaline dripped from her system. Widowmaker took a deep breath, held it, exhaled, repeated. If her pulse jumped above a certain interval, it caused all sorts of problems involving blood pressure and organ function. It was the only real disadvantage to an artificially lowered heart rate. It normally wasn’t a problem. It was never a problem.

               Widowmaker felt her lips, brushed her still-bleeding nose. Never a problem until Tracer. Fights with her – there were two, now, two failures she could not explain – left her like this. Stunned in a way she felt like she remembered.

              


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this story was intentionally supposed to be one chapter long. But I had so much fun writing a more action-oriented story, and something about it kept nagging me to the point where I had to write more. So here we are! This chapter has more plot than anything else, but it's going to be setting up some good widowtracer interaction in the next chapter. Enjoy! And please leave a comment if you like it, or just want to correct my French

“Tell me everything again, from the start.”

“I have done that eight times already, Reyes. I want to go to bed,” Widowmaker replied. She rubbed her eyes, exhaustion burning at the edges of her vision.

“How did they know we were going to be there?” Reyes’s fist came down hard on his desk, sending a few pens clattering to the floor.

“I’ve already said, I don’t know,” she said evenly. She liked to act as calm as possible when Reyes got upset; it seemed to irritate him more when she wasn’t smashing expensive writing utensils along with him.

The truth was that it unnerved her too. Tracer should never have been at the club last night. Though Hosterly could have passed the information – somehow – to Overwatch earlier that month, there was always the possibility of another spy. Talon didn’t have many members or informants; the thought disturbed her.

She hadn’t told Reyes about the kiss. Widowmaker reasoned that it was extraneous information (a ploy to distract her, no doubt); Reyes would make her describe it thoroughly, pick it apart for nonexistent hidden meaning. She wasn’t in the mood for his detail-orientation.

Right now his thoughts were inscrutable behind his mask. Widowmaker herself had never seen him without it, and had heard enough gossip through fellow soldiers that the suspense was gone.

She waited as his fingers drummed on the keyboard. “Fine. You’re dismissed.”

“ _Enfin_ ,” she murmured under her breath.

               ---

               Widowmaker didn’t dream often. When she did, they were usually snatches of memories she didn’t recognize: the Overwatch flag, Paris looking much larger and brighter than she was used to, a man she kissed, blood leaking from his neck onto her bed. She viewed them like war photographs in a textbook. They may have been sad, once, but she had heard the story enough to ignore it now.

               This time was different. Bursts of color popped against her eyelids (grey, brown, orange, purple, white, red, an explosion of blue sifting between her fingers). She turned, trying to find the source, but when she reached for her guns, they had vanished. Clocks melted in her palms and spattered across her chest. The liquid was hot, but froze when it touched her skin. It was chaos, and it scared her (she realized with a mounted feeling, like the moment she realized she had missed a shot).

               She woke suddenly, bedsheets tangled around her arms and neck. The clock blared 2:43 in the morning.

               Widowmaker’s heart rate was too fast. She felt her pulse in her temples when she sat up. She felt slick with cold sweat, and sick with humidity and disorientation. There had been moments like this when she first came to Talon: dozens of sleepless nights disrupted by vague nightmares. Though that was years ago, and they shouldn’t have reappeared so vividly and differently now.

               She could just use a stabilizer and be done with it. The syringes artificially lowered her heart rate; she hadn’t needed one for a while, but maybe the sudden rush of emotions and anxieties lately were a sign. Admitting a returning weakness would have to be the concession for a functioning cardiovascular system.

               She kept a vial in the drawer of her nightstand; the needle bit into her skin, flushing a dizzying combination of chemicals into her bloodstream. Widowmaker exhaled and laid back down, rearranging the blankets into a more comfortable position. She waited. Her heartbeat receded from her ears. She was fine, for now.

               _One shot, one kill. One shot, one kill._

She was not fine. She was terrified.

               ---

               If only it had ended there. The next two weeks were disastrous for Widowmaker. Reyes delivered another two missions: standard sniping, this time, which was what she _excelled_ at.

               Moracco. Widowmaker leaned out of a window in the second floor of an ambassador’s house-his limp body was propped up, holding the door closed behind her-bracing her arms against the brick ledge. Her target was an avid omnic supporter, a radical who had spoken out against new laws binding omnics to commercial companies. She stared down her rifle’s scope, finger poised on the trigger. The man was walking down a staircase with a small group. He stopped and looked up towards Widowmaker’s window.

               A flash of panic punctured her chest, and she flattened herself against the wall. A few seconds passed, and she dared to glance outside again.

               The man had not looked at her window. He was tying his shoe. Widowmaker gritted her teeth, forced herself to breathe evenly. She repositioned her gun, centered the man’s head between the red marks on her scope. He stood up again, and she flinched automatically. But no, the bullet was already gone; she spotted the cloud of dust it created as it ricocheted a few inches above his head.

               “ _Damner!”_ She hissed. Her target turned to look behind him in confusion, and one of the other men pointed to the hole in the soft dirt above his head.

               Widowmaker abandoned her sights. She shot blindly as the men scattered; two of them fell under her semi-automatic. There was a flash of light on the left. She opened fire, hissed when it was just a streak of light reflecting off of a car. She swiveled back to the stairs, and her target froze long enough for Widowmaker to aim. As disastrous as this mission was going, at least Reyes couldn’t say that she’d failed. He collapsed.

               There was a fourth member who managed to duck and run away. She didn’t see where he went, but she would be able to call Talon and have them take care of it. Her job was over; now, the hardest part would have to be swallowing her pride and admitting that it had taken more than one shot.

               ---

               New York. Widowmaker preferred cities anyway. The alleys and fire escapes provided better hiding places, and the constant rush of sound meant that gunfire and fights normally went unnoticed. Rain misted across the city. The hum of traffic whispered behind Widowmaker as she sprinted between buildings. Pistol fire skittered around her ankles. Shouting enveloped the alley behind her. At least Heathers-a scout for Overwatch who Talon had been monitoring for months-was already dead. Widowmaker had laced her coffee with poison while the waitress’s back was turned. The problem had appeared when Widowmaker had failed to realize that the surrounding diner tables were occupied by bodyguards, not customers.

               A mistake proving to be important now. Widowmaker weaved between trashcans. Her heels created drumbeats that matched the speed of her increasing heart rate. _Breathe in, breathe out_. She unstrapped her grappling hook from the belt around her bodysuit and swung it upwards. More yelling behind her.

               _Breathe in, breathe out._ The hook clattered across a rooftop and caught on a drainpipe. Widowmaker retracted the rope so quickly that she couldn’t brace her feet against the alley wall. She twisted and slammed one side against the building’s concrete exterior, scraping towards the top-bodysuit peeling away from abrasion-and firing three successive shots towards three pursuers. Two dropped, and the third one reached into his coat. Widowmaker saw his hands kick back the same time a piercing pain flared in her calf.

               A breathless shot towards the perpetrator, and he crumpled with the others. Widowmaker didn’t scream when she lost her grip and the rope burned through her hands. She did gasp when she hit the ground. Multiple bones had to be broken, and it wasn’t as though her fractured circulatory system could repair them. She let the rain brush its fingers on her cheek. Her mouth tasted like copper.

               “ _Widowmaker, do you copy?”_ Her receiver grumbled.

               “I need medical assistance,” she muttered. The sentence was exhausting. Where had been her first mistake that night? When she had focused too much on Heathers to examine her environment? Or when the spin of blue police lights dragged her attention outside too long to notice the three people watching her from inside the restaurant?

               ---

               There was a startling contrast between her blueish-purple skin and the sterile white of hospital sheets. This was what Widowmaker thought about while Reyes was talking to her.

               She’d been propped up in the hospital for four days, floating in and out of medicinal sleep. The bullet hadn’t gone too deep, but surgery had been required. When Widowmaker took a breath, her chest tightened painfully: a result of two shattered ribs.

               “Widowmaker. _Widowmaker_ , goddamn it.” She only looked up when Reyes tossed a plastic bag onto her bed. Inside were three empty syringes, blue liquid clinging to the inside walls. Her stabilizers. “Explain this.”

               Widowmaker blinked slowly and met Reyes’s gaze for the first time. Fury rolled off of him in nearly tangible waves. “What about them?”

               “ _You know what._ You haven’t needed to use stabilizers in two damn years, Widowmaker, and suddenly Sombra finds three in the trash.” She decided not to be offended about Sombra going through her room. It sounded like something she would do, and there was really no understanding her odd habits and quirks. “Something is very _wrong_ with you.”

               “There is nothing wrong with me.” She held his gaze through the mask. Twin pits of blackness that managed to convey anger. She refused to be ashamed or intimidated by a man who went around calling himself _Reaper._

               “You nearly failed your last two missions. You’re artificially keeping your heartrate down. You were sent on two sniping missions, and you _missed.”_ He backed away from her hospital bed in order to pace across the room. Widowmaker hated pacers.

               “Could you stop tracking dirt into my hospital room?” She asked lightly.

               “Something happened on that mission in the United States. Where you killed Nathaniel Hosterly. You met Overwatch,” he growled.

               Widowmaker sat up quickly. “If you dare to suggest that I am a _traitor_ -“

               “We’re both traitors,” Reyes snapped. “How do I know you won’t betray the organization that protects you again?”

               “The three of us-you, me, and Sombra- _lead_ this organization!”

               “Prove it.” The room was very quiet. “What else happened that night?”

               Widowmaker didn’t realize that her fists were clenched until they relaxed. Her purple nail polish was chipped. “The girl was there. Tracer.”

               “Yes.”

               “She kissed me.”

               “She-she what?” Reyes’s voice took on such a startled tone that Widowmaker suddenly felt very silly. Like she was at a sleepover, or something.

               “She kissed me. It caught me off guard, and she was able to use it against me. She wasn’t even supposed to be there that night. I don’t know if she will appear again.” It was the closest Widowmaker would come to admitting her fear. The nightmares. The anxiety.

               “Do you _care_ for her?”

               Widowmaker’s eyes fluttered shut. _Mon Dieu._ “God, Reyes, no, I do not _care_ for her.”

               “Does she care for you?”

               “I can’t answer that. I don’t know. I doubt it.”

               “She might have cared for Amelie.”

               “I would not know.”

               There was another bubble of silence. Then Reyes laughed, softly. Widowmaker had heard that laugh before. She remembered when he first told her that he was going to kill Jack Morrison. The laugh was the same now as it was then.

               “We can use this,” he said slowly, his voice saturated with-glee? Excitement?

               “Explain,” she replied.

               “You’re going to destroy Overwatch from the inside out.”

 

              

              

              

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! College has started and has been taking up all my time, but I hope some of the action in this chapter makes up for it. If you spot any mistakes, please let me know! I don't think the next chapter should take so long.

Over the next month, Widowmaker healed. Her ribs fused back together, and the bullet’s tear in her leg faded into a bleached scar. Reyes reluctantly allowed her more stabilizers, and there was both reassurance and disappointment in seeing the blue vials on her nightstand.

  
The nightmares dogged her sleep.

  
More importantly, Sombra had started to put their plan into motion. Widowmaker didn’t know the details, and she elected to ignore Sombra’s enigmatic notes left on her door (“Ignore the dead pigeon in the hallway” was her personal favorite. There had not been a pigeon in the hallway.). By the end of the month, Overwatch knew that Widowmaker would be in the Vatican City on November 3rd.  
\---  
The day had started with Widowmaker pulling on her boots and noticing a slip of paper jammed into the seam where she normally hid a knife.

  
_Good luck! See you in a month! -Sombra ♥_

  
Widowmaker crumpled it in her hand and tossed it into the trashcan on the way out of her room.

  
There was meeting between the Pope and a few members of the European Union that night. Widowmaker camped behind a chimney a quarter of a mile away from the convention building. It was important to be close but not too close, especially when the sun was still rolling towards the horizon. The event wouldn’t start until nightfall, and she couldn’t expect Overwatch to appear until then either. They were still an illegal organization too, as much as they pretended otherwise.

  
Widowmaker checked her supplies. She had brought a bag, but decided that she wasn’t going to use it. The heavy material would only weigh her down, and if everything went well, she would have to get rid of it anyway.

  
One knife strapped to her thigh, her gun holstered across her back, a radio transmitter with a soft blue glow hitched to her ear, her infra-sight goggles, a grappling hook, three venom mines, three stabilizers, and four black hair bands encircling her wrist. She’d wanted to bring more weapons, but Reyes had argued against it.

  
“What’s the point of bringing so much supplies if you’re not going to use it?” He had growled. She recognized the logic, but there was a certain comfort in knowing that if you dropped three knives, you had two more.

  
Widowmaker examined Widow’s Kiss, clicking the safety off with a frown. There was something shoved into the gun’s barrel that hadn’t been there when she’d loaded the gun that morning. She flipped it upside down and tapped its nose to the ground; a piece of paper fluttered to the ground.

  
_I know you threw away the first one. Be safe! Reyes and I will miss you. -Sombra ♥_

  
She read through it a second time, and then a third, and tucked it into the inside pocket of her bodysuit.

  
There was nothing to do until dark except wait. Widowmaker was good at being patient, but she felt charged, restless with anticipation. She paced, she cleaned Widow’s Kiss, she watched the swelling crowd on the city’s streets. The figures below were a swarm of colors, too indistinct to make out. Was Overwatch already here? How many agents would show up? Would Tracer be there?

  
That was what the plan came down to: Tracer’s involvement. Widowmaker had no doubt that the girl could be relied on to appear. But she did not know how much influence she would carry, and if it would be enough to support their plan.

  
Widowmaker’s fingers came up to brush her lips unconsciously. They felt numb with the memory of Los Angeles. Would it happen again? To have her breath drawn from her mouth, to lurch forward into someone else’s grasp, to feel the awful slant to her thinking that followed?

  
Widowmaker pressed her fingers to her temple, willing back the headache that threatened to crawl forward. She needed to concentrate; she only had three stabilizers, and it wouldn’t be economical to use one on the first night of her mission.

  
Light was beginning to drain from the sky. Spots of fluorescent colors were beginning to blink into existence across the city. The riot of tourist outfits from earlier had begun to drift away as more demure variations of white and black took its place. Guards were starting to appear too. Widowmaker spotted a thin outline of movement pasted against the dark blue sky. They were too far away to see her – not that it would have mattered, she wouldn’t have committed such a novice mistake as to make wide movements while standing up anyway.

  
Widowmaker took her time on the approach. She darted between spires and air conditioners cropping up on roofs and museums alternatively. Only once did she encounter a guard, on the far left of where she had chosen to hide for the night. He never saw her coming; Widowmaker dashed a knife across his throat from behind before he could turn around. She kicked his body over from where it had fallen face-down on the roof. The black, bullet-proof suit was unornamented, only pigmented from where blood has dribbled down his neck to stain the front. Not Overwatch, then. Their insignias could be spotted from a mile away. Widowmaker grimaced.

  
She leaned Widow’s Kiss against the railing of a rooftop restaurant. Here she had a clear view of the convention building without being too conspicuous.

  
“Widowmaker, can you hear me? Report back to headquarters.” Her earpiece buzzed with a voice she didn’t recognize.

  
“I copy.”

  
“Have you seen Overwatch yet?”

  
“No. Only local guards.” A few muffled words in the background. “We’ll tell you when they’ve landed.”

  
“Understood,” she replied lightly. So Overwatch hadn’t even arrived yet. Widowmaker paced along the railing. “What should I do until then?”

  
More whispering. “Wait a few minutes. Then create a scene.”

  
“Create a scene?” She repeated, pumping vitriol into her tone. “Does Reyes want me to risk this mission?”

  
“He says…he says you’ll damn well risk this mission if it’ll bring Overwatch to where we need them.” She could tell the person on the receiver wasn’t keen on repeating these words to her. She didn’t blame him

.  
“Bien sûr. I’ll remember that when I get back,” she replied. The building had swallowed most of the crowd by this point, and officers stationed at the front were herding in a few stragglers. The square was empty.  
  
Widowmaker saw four guards still positioned on neighboring buildings, excluding the two at the door. She raised Widow’s Kiss and shot one; his body tumbled from the ledge and became a dark mass at the foot of a church. A scream from below.

“Over there!” Someone shouted, but Widowmaker had already dropped from the roof onto a fire escape circling the building. Her footsteps rattled annoyingly, but if it was a scene Talon wanted, it was a scene they would get. She shot again at a car parked on the opposite street, where the bullet clanged against metal and set off the car alarm. Piercing wails echoed down the alleyway, dragging people to look out of their windows in confusion.  
  
Widowmaker vaulted to the ground, bracing her hands against the ground. Her leg protested at the impact, but she wasted no time on adjustment. Heavy stomping flooded the street behind her, and a bullet caressed the end of her ponytail – she felt its slipstream yank her hair forward. She unhooked a venom mind and tossed it behind her. It would steal a minute or two, but nothing more. She still needed to move quickly if she didn’t want to die before the mission began.  
  
Widowmaker fired off her grappling hook, where it hitched on the edge of a drainpipe. She wheeled to the top of the building, out in the open again. Though this time, there were no silhouettes plastered against the horizon. They were two stories down, coughing gas that peeled at their eyelids and burnt their lungs.  
  
Widowmaker took one slow breath. Another. Her heart rate hadn’t jumped much at all, even though she had been sprinting. The night sky sprawled overhead, punctured here and there with dark clouds. A brisk wind had begun at some point while she had been running; it whispered into the shell of her ear. Widowmaker tensed.  
  
Something metallic whizzed past her foot and sparked off the concrete. Vert. Another one scraped her boot and clanged to the ground, the air behind it tinged acid green. “Zut,” she muttered under her breath, adjusting her rifle. If Overwatch’s Genji was here, that could pose an actual problem. He moved too quickly to be an easy target, and the fact that he could scale walls made him difficult to avoid with any measure of success.  
  
No. No, she needed to stay focused on the plan. It was a good thing that Genji was here. Widowmaker’s chest felt tight again.

“There! There!” Someone called again, and Widowmaker risked a glance behind her. A swam of black-clothed soldiers flooded the grounds, slithering up the fire escapes and splashing into alleys. Damn, damn, damn. They must have flown in hours ago, maybe they were working with the Vatican officers, dropped in through helicopters or-  
  
It didn’t matter. Widowmaker exhaled through her teeth the same time as her earpiece buzzed. “It looks like Overwatch has landed.”

“No shit,” she growled. She jumped over the edge of the building, using her grappling hook to fling herself towards the top of another. Her fingers gripped the pockmarked stone easily, but she could feel where the blisters would appear by the end of the night. The radio popped obnoxiously in her ear -a scuffle? – and Reyes’s voice filled the opposite end.

“This is the last time we’ll be contacting you. We don’t want them to latch onto our signal. Don’t fuck it up.”

“I am turning the microphone off,” she said, and there was a snapping sound as the connection cut out while Reyes began his next sentence.

Overwatch was gaining on her. She could see their symbol glittering in the flash of streetlights. It was a good thing they weren’t relying on stealth; they were the loudest unit in the city. Widowmaker turned and trotted backwards, sliding Widow’s Kiss into her hands. She saw two people fall, but more pushed forward. She could assume they were working to surround the square as well (would Tracer be there? Was she behind Widowmaker now, the neon blue blurring too fast for Widowmaker to recognize, hot lips on her own in an awful attraction).

Widowmaker whipped around to face forward again, but the night yawned open in front of her, vacant. Another shuriken spun past her, and then a splitting pain slit along her ankle. She stumbled as the star clattered to the ground along the edge of her vision. She wasn’t down yet, though, and wheeled her arms until she was back-

No. The plan. The plan.

Fear, visceral and paralyzing, dragged at Widowmaker’s throat as her ankle twisted underneath her. She hit the ground, rolling with the momentum as she felt her bleeding foot soak through her bodysuit. When she finally halted, face embedded with dirt and ribs aching sorely, she tore the receiver from her ear and tossed it off of the building. She didn’t hear it reach the ground. Her ears rang.

The shouting got closer; it was all around her, lights biting into her eyes and searing the ground she grasped at. She had broken another nail somehow. The murmurs were indistinct, but she heard names drift past her like broken clouds: Jack, Reyes, Amelie, McCree. The cool circle of a gun barrel pressed against her cheek. Her hands twitched with anxiety, heartbeat roaring in her temples. She needed a stabilizer. She needed to jump up, spray the agents with Widow’s Kiss. She needed to kill Tracer. She needed a stabilizer.

The barrel lifted from her skin. She heard an accented voice speak clearly above the others: “Stop. Angela will want to see her.”

The space opened up above her as people moved back. Widowmaker flinched – god, she flinched – as a set of handcuffs closed around her wrists and ankles. Her palms itched with anticipation, but she forced herself to lie still, even when she felt a needle pierce her arm, and the wash of lights and colors swirled too quickly for her to follow.

\--

The clothes were ugly. Not only did they slip loosely over her hands and feet, they were a sterile white, and white was not Widowmaker’s best color. She held a similar kind of disappointment towards the cell Overwatch had provided for her. The cell was grey and bland, slightly chilly, with vertical bars set into the floor and ceiling. She was the only prisoner. Widowmaker had not expected comfortable accommodations, but surely the organization could afford better housing for one of the world’s most wanted criminals.

She did not know how much time had passed. She felt calm. Overwatch wanted something from her if she was still alive. Widowmaker pressed two fingers to her neck, feeling out her pulse; it was steady and slow. They had taken the stabilizers – thank God she didn’t need them now.

“You’re awake,” a voice said, accompanied by the harsh slamming of a metal door. Widowmaker looked up.

Angela Ziegler strode into the room, dressed in a white coat instead of her winged battle outfit. Her hands were empty.

“Angela,” Widowmaker said lightly. Her throat felt raspy with thirst, and her foot stung when she shifted to lean against the wall. The handcuffs chafed painfully; she could feel where the skin was starting to peel off.

“Widowmaker,” Ziegler replied with a nod. Her expression was stern but not strict. Widowmaker couldn’t have guessed what she was thinking, but that wasn’t unusual. “Welcome home.”

“I don’t recognize this place,” Widowmaker shrugged.

Ziegler’s lips turned downwards. “Amelie lived here. You must know that.”

“I am not Amelie.”

“Clearly.” To Angela’s credit, she maintained a solid expression, only relinquishing a small sigh. “You know how this goes. No food until you answer questions about Talon’s operations. There are soldiers stationed outside the door, as well as cameras in every corner of this room. Touch those bars for too long and you’ll be shocked.”

Widowmaker said nothing. She had noted the stoicism in Ziegler’s stance, but with a closer look, she decided the doctor was wearier than anything else. Shadows clung to her eyes, and there was something hollow in the way she scanned Widowmaker’s cuffs.

“The interrogation will begin soon. Wait here.” With that, Ziegler exited through the same door.

“I cannot do much else,” Widowmaker muttered, drawing her knees closer to her chest.

\--

The door opened again an hour or so later. A crick had begun to form in Widowmaker’s neck from staying still so long; it twinged when she turned to look outside of the cell, but it hurt more when she snapped her head down at the sight of orange tights, a bomber jacket, an incessant, fierce blue glow.  
One shot, one kill. She repeated the mantra out of habit, but there were no rifles here.

Tracer reached into her pocket and pulled out a key. Widowmaker sat up straighter, but she only unlocked the door to enter the cell, then locked it back behind her. They were only separated by a few feet and open air, and Widowmaker felt her hands curl into themselves, broken nails biting into her palm. One shot, one kill. One shot, one kill. I have never felt more alive. And oh, god, was it ever true now.  
She did not care for the girl. She just did not understand the girl. Tracer was unpredictable, and she made Widowmaker feel very, very alive.

That scared her.

Tracer sat down in the opposite corner. She clutched a clipboard with blank paper, a pen gripped like a dagger. Her face spoke about something defeated and afraid: clearly she had been crying not long ago. Her cheeks were red and her eyelashes were clumped together. The goggles were gone. Widowmaker saw a constellation of freckles.

“What’s your name?” Tracer asked, staring intently at the clipboard.

“I could slam you into the bars, shock you to death, if Angela is telling the truth, and take your keys,” Widowmaker replied.

Tracer blinked and scowled. “I asked for your name.” Her accent made the sentence sound more optimistic than Widowmaker guessed was intended.

“You know my name.”

“Just say it,” Tracer said under her breath.

Widowmaker stretched her shoulders, raising her cuffed hands above her head. The action eased the ache in her neck briefly. “Widowmaker.”

Tracer scribbled something. “What organization are you associated with?”

“Why do you think I will sit here and answer your questions?”

“Mercy will take your food. You’ll die in a few weeks if you don’t cooperate,” Tracer said, eyes narrowed. She wrote down something else.

Widowmaker decided that this was not how her time in Overwatch was going to be spent, in an endless, starving question-and-answer session conducted by the person that she kissed in her nightmares.

Tracer was already anxious. She could work off of that.

“I thought Overwatch was an organization that advocated for peace,” she said coolly.

“It is. What organization do you work with?”

“Starving your prisoners to death doesn’t sound very peaceful to me. Perhaps I have the translation wrong. Your kind of peace is not the one Amelie understood.”

Tracer’s head jerked up, and she met Widowmaker’s gaze with a stare. Her mouth was slightly open. Widowmaker felt a smirk slide across her face.

Tracer tore her eyes away, and the lines around her mouth and eyes deepened. “I asked you what organization you work for.”

“You already know the answer to that. This is wasting my time.” Widowmaker watched Tracer write “Talon” in messy, capital letters.

“How long have you been working with Talon?”

“Ever since they kidnapped Amelie and tortured her into becoming me. I was initiated after killing Gerard.” Widowmaker maintained a breezy tone, even when Tracer sighed through gritted teeth and hunched her shoulders, keeping her eyes lowered. Her eyelashes caressed her cheek.

“What were your activities there?”

“I am an assassin. Amelie must have been quite acrobatic. Her grace helped me kill Mondatta.” Tracer’s knuckles whitened around her pen.

“What can you tell me about Talon’s current plans?”

“The war against Omnics was not over when Overwatch-“ Widowmaker gestured widely at the cell around her, then flicked her wrist towards Tracer (who twitched backwards) “-disbanded years ago. Omnics are still robots, and no amount of Buddhist quotes can change the fact that they only rose in rebellion because their programming allowed them to. To consider them humans while they continue to hunt people in the streets is a failure on behalf of Overwatch.”

Red washed over Tracer’s face and she sat up stiffly, jabbing one finger towards Widowmaker. “That’s not for you to decide!” She yelped, English accent thickening her words, “When Omnics become violent, it’s only because people like you attack them first!”

“Amelie believed that-“

“Don’t say her name,” Tracer snapped, and she was suddenly inches from Widowmaker’s face, hair matted with sweat and plastered to her forehead, breath stirring Widowmaker’s skin. “Don’t you dare say her name,” she whispered.

“Why does it matter to you?” Widowmaker asked softly, leveling her gaze with Tracer’s, arching her back so as to disguise the shiver that winded its way down her spine. “Amelie is dead.”

“No,” Tracer rasped, her eyes darting across Widowmaker’s face as though it would open up to reveal the other woman underneath it. “She can’t be dead. She-she has to be alive, in there, somewhere.”

“Amelie died years ago at Talon Headquarters. Most of her memories are gone.”

Something glinted behind Tracer’s eyes, at once both restrained and desperate. “Most?” She had not backed away, and Widowmaker felt dizzy with adrenaline. She felt her pulse in her temples and forced a slow, steady breath.

“Most,” she said.

There was a tightrope silence that bent between them, delicate and dangerous. “Did she ever love me?” Tracer asked. She was glowing with a beaten hope; it leaked from,,

Widowmaker took a moment to answer. She had never tried to dig into what scraps were left of the person that inhabited her body before her, and her head spun too much now (One shot, one kill, one shot, one kill, oneshot onekill oneshotonekill: A shot she could feel herself missing before she pulled the trigger) to consider it.

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly.

Tracer kissed her.

The first kiss had been brief and businesslike in comparison to this. Tracer pressed her against the wall, forcing Widowmaker’s cuffed hands above her head to allow the other girl to reach her lips. Widowmaker felt heat spill across her body, flaring and bursting with every brush and breath. She tasted salt from Tracer’s cheeks and ignored it. She allowed Tracer’s hands to wind through her hair and relished in it.

She did not stop to take a breath, and she had never felt more alive.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the daily everyone! Like I said, college has really caught up with me and I haven't had the chance to write as much as I would've liked. I hope a longer/more interesting chapter makes up for it!

Widowmaker hated patterns. Assassins and soldiers tended to cling to patterns – if a technique wasn’t broken, there was no need to fix it – but bred laziness, a false sense of security, and a predictability that usually lead to death. Widowmaker had routes and weapons she preferred, of course, but she managed to change her behavior often enough that she never worried about a lack of adaptability.  
  
Tracer was becoming a pattern. Most nights (Were they really nights? Widowmaker couldn’t tell anymore.) she crept into the cell, attempted a few questions (What is Talon doing now? Where are its agents located?), but it always ended with Tracer’s hands tugging out Widowmaker’s ponytail, and Widowmaker using her cuffed hands to loop her arms around the other girl’s neck, pulling her closer.

Tracer refused to unlock her cuffs. Widowmaker respected that, even when she whispered French expressions and suggestions into her ear. Widowmaker felt like she deserved credit too; she still hadn’t tried testing Angela’s theory about the electric bars. (Not yet? Soon?)

“Overwatch is getting impatient,” Tracer said slowly, twirling her pencil between slender fingers. “You haven’t said anything we can use.”

Widowmaker took her hand, slipping the pencil out of it. She traced steady circles on her palm, enjoying the brief twitch and blush it elicited from Tracer. “Do they know about this?” She asked.

She looked away and pulled her hand away. Widowmaker frowned. “I don’t think so. I don’t know. I would lose my job here.”

“Fraternizing with the enemy?” Widowmaker let a slow smile slide up her face.

“It’s not funny,” Tracer snapped.

 _“Bien sûr que non,_ ” Widowmaker replied breezily. She twisted a hair tie around her wrist and retightened her bun. “I am surprised that they haven’t said anything. Does Overwatch trust its enemies enough to avoid putting cameras in its hold?”

“I disabled them,” Tracer mumbled, focusing intently on her hands.

“Naughty girl,” Widowmaker grinned, leaning forward to press a kiss to Tracer’s cheek. When she didn’t move away, Widowmaker scooted closer, dragging her lips down her neck, to the hollow above her collarbone. “I’m rubbing off on you.”

“Stop,” she said, pulling away. Widowmaker paused, drew back. “We…we need to stop this.”

“Stop this?” Widowmaker repeated.

Tracer exhaled and stood, brushing dust from her leggings. Widowmaker rested her shoulder back against the wall, remained sitting.

“This-this isn’t right. I don’t want to be like you. I don’t want to keep-“ She was pacing now, squinting her eyes together in what Widowmaker guessed was to prevent tears or avoid eye contact. “I-I like Overwatch. And you’re part of Talon. And if we-we have to sneak around, that just means that we know we’re doing something wrong.” There was a stiffness to her voice that even Widowmaker could grasp; she had rehearsed this.  
“It’s not me who is sneaking around.” Widowmaker raised her hands and allowed them to clink together loudly. Tracer shot her an annoyed glance, and Widowmaker raised her eyebrows, motioning for her to continue.

The pacing resumed. It wasn’t any less irritating when Tracer did it, but at least now Widowmaker had a better view.

“You’re part of Talon,” Tracer repeated. “You’re-and you’re evil. You killed a lot of people. It’s not right. And I’m going to let Soldier 76 know about-about everything.” Her voice withered away. Now she looked just-sad. Like a used bullet casing, Widowmaker decided: hollow, its purpose fulfilled, ready to be disposed of and crunched underfoot. Shadows had taken up residence under her eyes (When she left each night, she usually cried. Sometimes Widowmaker would brush away the salty tracks on her cheeks, but more often than not, Tracer would push her away before relocking the door. It left Widowmaker with what she assumed was an indistinct disappointment. But she felt it now, while Tracer was crying again in her cell. Sharper than sadness, directed outward instead of in.)

“Commander Morrison,” Widowmaker said slowly.

Tracer’s features twisted together. “Of course you know that. You shouldn’t know that. I have no idea how you know that, and when I have to turn in my report tomorrow…” She covered her face with her hands.

Widowmaker shuffled closer to the wall. She allowed silence to crawl into the space between them while Tracer rubbed at her eyes. The attempt to prevent Widowmaker from seeing her tears was endearing, almost, in its own way.

Widowmaker exhaled and closed her eyes. “I will make a deal.”

“A deal?” Tracer repeated shakily, lifting her head. Her face had flushed red. She squinted at Widowmaker through her goggles.

“You don’t trust me?” Widowmaker asked, tilting her head.

“No,” Tracer deadpanned, expressionless.

Widowmaker chuckled silkily. “Fair enough. How about this? I will answer some of your questions-“Tracer leaned forward. “-If you unlock my handcuffs.”

Now she scrambled backwards, fury washing over her features. “Absolutely not! You’ll kill me! You’ll get out! What kind of-idiot-do you think I am?”

Widowmaker saw Tracer’s hand reach into her pocket as she edged towards the door. “If I wanted to kill you, I would have done it by now,” she said quickly. Damn.  
  
Tracer paused. “So that means I’m supposed to make it easier for you now?”

“It means I want you alive.”

“I thought you didn’t care about anyone or anything.”

Widowmaker scowled. “I did not say I cared about you.” This was like talking to Reyes all over again.

“Then what do you need me alive for? What are you using me for?” A pleading note had entered her voice, and her figure slackened.

When Widowmaker opened her mouth to answer, there were no words on her lips. She grasped for something to say that would make Tracer turn around, and came up empty. Damn, damn, damner tout. “Talon has eleven operating bases across the world,” Widowmaker breathed, the sentence tumbling out before she could keep track of it or where it was going. “Overwatch has discovered six.”

Tracer blinked. “Overwatch-what?” Her hand left her pocket.

“Six, stupid girl,” Widowmaker spat. Giddy revulsion rose in her throat, and her head swam with a sudden wave of dizziness. “There’s one you all completely passed over in Puerto Rico. Sombra was stationed there at the time, and she swore she could’ve touched your planes, and you still did not turn around.” Sombra was going to kill her, if Reyes didn’t get to her first. She was doing this. She was really doing this.

Tracer stepped forward timidly, raising her notepad with wide eyes.

“The one in South Korea is one of our most fortified locations,” she continued, “That’s where most of our technology is being developed. Though India is where our weapons are manufactured, before being sent to Italy-“

“-Slow down!” Tracer interjected, scribbling furiously.

“Switzerland is mostly abandoned, but it can be fully operational in nine hours if we needed it.” Widowmaker spoke half of a second more slowly, allowing Tracer to recover when she dropped her pen in her enthusiasm.

“Is there one in Brazil?” She asked under her breath, and a smirk slipped over Widowmaker’s face.

“There used to be. It was relocated after the Olympic games; we knew you were becoming suspicious. Argentina is the newest location. It is the last one Overwatch does not know about.”

Tracer finished her notes slowly, dropping the notebook onto the cell floor with a long exhale and a lopsided grin. Her eyes glowed as bright as her accelerator. There was a quiet moment while Tracer flipped through two sheets of paper, back and forth, like they would melt away if she didn’t memorize them. “This is exactly what we need. We can have a direction, we can start deploying troops – alerting foreign branches – funding from the United Nations again-“ Her voice faltered when she noticed Widowmaker’s still-handcuffed wrists stretched forward.

“We had a deal,” she said.

Tracer’s breath hitched softly, and for a moment, Widowmaker thought she might refuse. But her hands dipped back into her bomber’s right pocket, and she pulled out a silver key. She inserted the key and coerced the lock into opening; the handcuffs clattered on the cell floor.  
  
Widowmaker exhaled in relief and rubbed the chafed skin on her wrists. They were sore but unblistered. She rotated her hands slowly, allowing feeling to inch back into them with an unpleasant prickling sensation.

Tracer had put the key back in her pocket, but her hand hovered over one blaster hooked to her leggings. Her eyes were like a frightened deer’s.

“You can relax, _cherie_ ,” Widowmaker said, rolling her eyes. “I am not going to attack you. We already established that I could have done so even with restraints.” The delicious, rebellious feeling from earlier still fizzed in her head. She felt reckless and dangerous, caution dripping away even when she knew it was risky. If Reaper demanded an explanation, Widowmaker could say that she had engaged in an information trade: it was her only option, security was too _fermé_. Besides, Talon was designed to be a mobile organization, relying more on its members than its locations.

“Now what?” Tracer asked, relaxing her stance with a wary gaze.

“Now I have a greater range of motion.”

“Yes?”

“Which means I can do things like this.” Widowmaker darted forward to pull Tracer (who struggled with a small noise of surprise) against her. Their lips smashed together; Tracer's hands stopped moving and found their way to Widowmaker’s hips. The giddiness boiled to a fever pitch, melting in a series of satisfied moans when Tracer tugged at her bottom lip. The chronal accelerator felt warm under her fingertips. She felt around the edges, her kissing turning into frowning when she couldn’t pry it away.

Tracer giggled, cupping her hand on Widowmaker’s neck to prevent her from moving away. “You can’t take that off, love,” she said, and Widowmaker acquiesced a disappointed sigh.

“How do you shower, then?” Widowmaker asked, using her freed hands to curl Tracer’s spiked hair around her fingers. She shifted them downwards in a slow process, sliding to Tracer’s thighs and flicking the straps encircling them with one broken fingernail. “What is the point of this, too? You only need one belt to hold your guns.”

Tracer took Widowmaker’s hands in her own and guided them back to her hips. “It’s a precaution. Just in case I need it.”

“Impractical,” Widowmaker mumbled, eyes closed.

“I don’t think you can talk about impracticality with that ridiculous bodysuit you wear.” Tracer pulled back long enough for Widowmaker to catch her goofy smile.

“It is both efficient and striking. People are easy to manipulate when you display a certain amount of skin.”  
“Is that true, love?” Tracer’s kisses were deepening, quickening, demanding.

“I can demonstrate,” Widowmaker whispered along the shell of Tracer’s ear, and felt a spin of satisfaction when the girl shivered under her touch. She untangled her hands from Tracers’ in order to focus on the hem of the shapeless, white, prison-issue shirt. In one smooth movement, she’d tugged it over her head, exposing her torso but for a bra the same stark color as her shirt.

Widowmaker could not be embarrassed about these things, but Tracer’s face washed a deep red that obscured most of her freckles. Slowly, she reached out a hand to touch Widowmaker’s shoulder, following the line of her bra strap before hovering over the front clasp. It looked like she was actually shaking-her fingers were like tree branches caught in the wind.

“You do not need to be gentle,” Widowmaker murmured, raising one eyebrow in Tracer’s direction.

Tracer exhaled, grinned, and tore the clasp open; their bodies crushed together, every touch singing alive, alive, alive.

How much time had passed? (Did it matter? Tracer leaned on her shoulder, messy hair brushing her cheek. Widowmaker was not a cuddler by nature, but Tracer certainly was. Even with her bra back on, her hands kept constant contact with Widowmaker’s skin through small, seemingly accidental movements. It was not unpleasant.) Would someone call for Tracer, walk in to check where she was? (Did it matter?)

“You didn’t answer my question earlier,” Tracer said, intertwining and rewinding her hands with Widowmakers’.

“ _Vos mains m'ont fait oublier,_ ” Widowmaker replied coolly.

Tracer shifted to give Widowmaker the full force of her confused expression before shrugging it off. “I want to know…” She inhaled slowly. “Why do you want me alive? Why haven’t you killed me when I’ve given you dozens of opportunities?”

Widowmaker considered the question. She felt her heartbeat in her temples, a warmth settling in her chest, the fluttering feeling in her head stirring its wings. “I do not know,” she said finally.

“You don’t care about me.” It was a statement rather than a question.

“I-no.” Widowmaker pushed the word out of her mouth; it stuck on her teeth and tongue like cotton. “I do not know.” This was not a lie.

Widowmaker looked down to where Tracer was still leaning on her shoulder. The girl turned and pressed her face to Widowmaker’s skin, so that her voice was quiet and slightly muffled when she spoke: “You don’t know anything about Amelie and…what she thought about me?”

“I was telling the truth the first time you asked me this question.” Widowmaker leaned back against the cell wall and closed her eyes.

“Tell me what you do know,” Tracer murmured.

Widowmaker paused here and opened her eyes. She wasn’t sure if this story was good for Tracer, who had already proven her slant towards the self-destructive when stressed. Adding more information -sensitive information, vital to Talon in a way mobile locations were not, she fought to remember this – might be too much for someone already straddling a line Widowmaker couldn’t begin to understand.

“I can take it,” Tracer said suddenly, like she’d heard where Widowmaker’s thoughts left off. She had shifted again, head turned upwards towards Widowmaker’s. Her expression was startlingly intense: chips of Tiger’s Eye that flashed with bitter resolve. A smile flickered on Widowmaker’s lips, and she tilted Tracer’s head up to kiss her again, slowly.

Tracer broke it off first (flushed again) and shook her head, leaning away so that they were no longer touching. “You can’t distract me by kissing me,” she growled.

Widowmaker bent down again, but Tracer pulled away, extricating herself so that they were just sitting across from each other. Widowmaker leveled her gaze and waited for any sign of hesitation in the other girl.

“I’m serious,” she said eventually, not without a trace of irritation.

Widowmaker rolled her shoulders and shrugged back on her Overwatch-issue clothes, allowing the silence to wither into tense awkwardness. Tracer’s eyebrows inched down together, and she looked like she was about to leave. When her knuckles braced white on the floor, Widowmaker sighed.

“Amelie was kidnapped by Talon as a test subject for relatively new technology.” The blood drained from Tracer’s face, but she bit her lip and nodded.

Widowmaker continued. “I do not know the exact tactics they used on her. I believe they are still afraid that I will use them to recover some part of Amelie’s memories or personality. I could not care less about the woman.”

“What did they do to her?” Tracer whispered.

“They tortured her to the point of oblivion. Physical, mental…As I said, I do not know the details. I do know that one day, Amelie went to sleep and I woke up.” Widowmaker tipped her head. “It was startling. Painful. I was confused, and probably distressed. Everything from those first few days is…difficult to remember.”

A wash of colors flashing behind her eyelids. Waves of heat and cold swept over her body until she was nauseous. Pain wracked and crumpled her fatigued body, people were speaking angrily in a language she did not understand. She knew she was dying, felt her pulse skitter weakly, fearfully.

It was not unlike the nightmares she had now, accompanied by the same vague panic and hatred. Both visions ended the same way these days: the bite of a needle along her wrist, cold liquid crawling towards her heart. It felt wrong for it to slow down – the pauses between beats were too large, too sluggish, surely she was not getting the oxygen she needed. But when she tried to rouse herself into terror strong enough to force her body into movement, she discovered that she could not muster the emotional capability. Her mind dug into some primal well, and found nothing. In a small way this was worse, but in a larger way she didn’t care.

“They gave me a lot of drugs. They slowed my heartbeat and restricted the oxygen to my brain. They turned my skin blue and made it – made it difficult to empathize with other people.” She paused for dramatic effect more than anything else, sneaking a glance at Tracer. The poor girl looked sick herself, but she leaned forward.

“Keep going,” she said drily.

Widowmaker shrugged. “There is not much more to tell. Talon had their perfect weapon and successful technology. It was expensive. I don’t think they’ll attempt it again, but they have the means to try. I am one of Talon’s more mobile agents. Assassination is efficient. I am the best in my field.”

Tracer wriggled closer. Her voice was low when she asked, “We removed a collection of vials from you when you were captured in Italy. What were they for?”

Widowmaker raised one eyebrow. “Those were stabilizers. They keep my heart rate low and stable.”

“You said they affect your emotions too.”

“Yes. That too.”

“When’s the last time you used one?”

Widowmaker frowned. This wasn’t information Overwatch needed to know. “Recently.”

Tracer stared at her foot. She didn’t say anything for a long time; Widowmaker almost felt like moving to the other side of the cell just to gain distance from a scene that was beginning to grow distasteful.

“I don’t want you to take them,” Tracer said abruptly. It was very quiet. Widowmaker wasn’t sure she heard correctly.

“Speak louder if-“

“I don’t want you to take them,” Tracer said more forcefully.

Widowmaker blinked, and felt surprise creep into her widened eyes. “I don’t want to take them either."

Tracer looked up, apparently startled. When they kissed, Widowmaker tasted her tears.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can ya'll BELIEVE TRACER IS GAY??!?!?!??! SHE HAS A GIRLFRIEND???? This was the best Christmas present Blizzard could have given me. I started tearing up.
> 
> I also know that some new info about her accelerator means that stuff in the last chapter is kind of inaccurate. While unfortunate, I'm too lazy to change it. I'll most likely write a bonus chapter at the end of the fic to make up for it. 
> 
> This was supposed to be the first part of a very long chapter, but I think it might be better just to split it into two. Therefore, this is sort of a short one, but the next one will be a bit longer. I wanted to work with a natural stopping point. It might be a little rushed cause I wanted to finish it before Christmas was over, but w/e I'll go over it later. 
> 
> This series of notes makes it look like I don't care but I promise I have some good stuff in store for the next chapter <3
> 
> Merry Christmas everyone!!

Overwatch found out, of course. Widowmaker knew it would have to happen eventually, and she suspected Tracer thought the same thing, even if neither of them would admit it.  
It happened the day the cell door opened, and Widowmaker looked up to see Angela striding into the room instead of Tracer. Her angel outfit (if you could even call it that. Widowmaker saw it more as a _costume_.) was on, with her staff and a small pistol hooked to her belt. She slammed the door behind her and locked it, shoving the key back into her pocket.  
  
“Are you upset about something?” Widowmaker asked lightly. Angela whirled around; one hand gripped the pistol with bleached knuckles, though she did not remove it from its hook.

“We know everything,” she said with gritted teeth. “And I hope it was goddamn worth it.”  
  
There was a pause. Widowmaker felt her palms starting to sweat, but she knew better than to just give Angela answers. She could have been lying as part of another interrogation tactic. “If you’re expecting me to fill this silence with explanations, you’re mistaken,” she replied.

“You don’t have to. There’s nothing to explain. _Stay where you are_ ,” she snapped as Widowmaker began to stand. She raised her eyebrows but leaned against the wall again, noting how Angela’s thumb ghosted over the release on her belt.

“Can you define ‘everything?’” Widowmaker asked.

“I don’t need to. I’m sure you’re very capable of remembering it yourself, especially considering how we removed your stabilizers.” Widowmaker’s eyes narrowed, but Angela continued: “We noticed the problem when your meal times weren’t showing up on the video feed. Tracer’s not nearly as good with computers as she believes she is. Hours of footage had just been transferred to another hard drive.”

Widowmaker tilted her head up, straightened her back. So they weren’t bluffing. They did know. Her head thudded with her increasing pulse, but she forced her body to remain still. “And?”

“How _dare_ you use her like that,” Angela hissed, stepping closer. “I know Talon had killed Amelie, but I didn’t know that they had found a parasite to use her body.”

Widowmaker smiled. “You must have not watched the tapes too closely. A parasite takes over an unwilling host, but I can assure you that Tracer was most certainly not-“ She didn’t get a chance to finish the rest of the sentence before Angela had unclipped her gun and smashed the butt against Widowmaker’s cheek. At the same time, Widowmaker kicked outward, sending Angela’s feet skidding out from underneath her. She tumbled backwards, giving Widowmaker enough time to lurch forward and dart towards the pocket holding the cell’s key. Angela had dropped the gun – now she scrabbled towards it on the floor while Widowmaker tried to hold her down with her body weight. Her bound wrists were presenting a problem, and the pain blossoming across her left temple was no help either. It was lucky she was accustomed this type of pain; blacking out would have presented a larger problem.   
  
Widowmaker’s fingers found the keys just as Angela pressed her earpiece with one free hand. “ _Requesting backup in Cell 14, the prisoner is attempting esc_ -“ Widowmaker smashed Angela’s ear with one foot and felt plastic crack under her heel. Angela shrieked with pain but her fingers found the gun. Widowmaker managed to slide sideways – keys in hand – before a gunshot exploded to her right. Her ears rang painfully. Angela looked stunned, fingers still wrapped around the handle.

Widowmaker leapt forward and jammed the key in the door, ignoring her suspicions about the cell’s electric properties. If she was caught by Overwatch, she would be sentenced to death anyway.

To her mild surprise, the lock clicked and the door swung open. She locked it behind her to prevent Angela, who was back on her feet and had one hand pressed to where blood trickled around her forehead, from following. She darted to the hold’s outside door, tasting cool air when she pulled it open. A cold, calm wave washed over her mind, ignoring the panic, anger, elation that tried to force its way up her throat. The numbness was immensely comforting in its familiarity. What’d she been the last few days was irrelevant. She was Widowmaker, assassin of Talon, and she never missed a shot and had never been captured. _One shot, one kill. One shot, one kill._

The hallway yawned open in three directions outside of the door. The clang of footsteps echoed from the left corridor, so Widowmaker took the path directly in front of her. The walls were gray metal with few doors or other corridors. She’d been unconscious when they brought her in, so she needed to gather as much information as possible now to compensate.

She turned a corner at random, shifting her position while keeping her steps light so as to not garner extra attention. It was surprising that alarms had not already gone off.

Now that she was back in an element she recognized, everything fell evenly into place like it’d been planned from the beginning. Her breath set into an easy rhythm, heart pumping slowly, dependably. No more of that skittering she had started to grow so accustomed to.

Widowmaker tried rooms at random, flinging open unlocked doors and kicking down locked ones. She needed to get out of Overwatch, but she would be damned if she didn’t return to Talon with the sort of information that Reyes expected.

Most of the rooms were bathrooms or janitor closets, punctuated here and there with machinery or barracks. She didn’t run into anyone either – was the base evacuated? Were people in the halls, searching for her? Or was Overwatch understaffed? Perhaps the rumors of a plummeting budget were true.

Finally, she reached a door with a reinforced lock and passcode – one she wouldn’t be able to kick open. Widowmaker considered the four-digit code. Sombra had received a flood of information in one of her recent hacks, including a store of passcodes used by Overwatch headquarters. They varied by branch, but Widowmaker didn’t know where she was.

“Damn,” she growled under her breath. Her first passcode, 5-3-4-1, received a blinking red bar above the numbers. As did the next one, and the one after that. Reyes had encouraged her to memorize the codes before the mission just in case, and though Widowmaker wasn’t about to admit it, it had been a cautious decision.

Before she could punch in the fifth combination, red warning sirens punctured the silence of the hallway, blowing an eerie light onto the walls. Widowmaker’s frown deepened, but the door sprang open and she was able to rush inside.

The room was an office of some sort; password-protected blue screens spanned the length of the opposite wall, with a few keyboards and file cabinets set up below them. The passwords to the computers were longer than any she’d memorized, but the cabinets were unlocked.

Widowmaker shuffled through them, removing stacks of folders marked with dates and locations. She opened one at random and scanned the first page: a list of Overwatch agents, their codenames, and the locations where they were stationed. Her eyes widened. Though she’d told Tracer that Talon knew all of Overwatch’s bases, there were a few cities here that she didn’t recognize. Amsterdam, Baghdad, Damascus. The list went on. Tracer had mentioned several in passing – Was it possible that she didn’t know they were international headquarters? Or was that her way of relaying them to Widowmaker?

She shook her head irritably. Right now, what Tracer did or said wasn’t important. ( _Wasn’t_ important.) She scanned as many names as she could, glaring at her baggy clothing. There was no place to stuff the papers to read later; she’d just have to hold them. There were at least five cabinets, but she couldn’t spend too long in one location lest guards find her. She needed to move on.

Widowmaker replaced the folders in the same way she had found them and backed out of the room, locking it behind her. The hallway was still empty, though the sirens continued to wail.

She chose to turn right, passing more rooms that didn’t have passcodes. None of them were named – their only distinguishing features were the numbers engraved next to the handles.

“There!” Someone spotted her as she was crossing an intersection. Widowmaker’s fingers twitched to where Widow’s Kiss would normally be strapped to her back, but she hissed in frustration when they met empty air. Footsteps flooded the hallway behind her, but she knew better than to waste time looking backwards.

A single bullet whizzed past her arm as she turned the corner.

But the path was blocked. There was a line of soldiers in black outfits, most of them carrying pistols, as well as a few holding larger shotguns and rifles. Apparently, they’d dressed in a hurry. Widowmaker had to admire Overwatch’s efficiency. Talon could have been prepared in half the time, but Overwatch had also been struggling with funds and enlistment.

More guards closed in behind her. She didn’t recognize any of them.

“Widowmaker, put your knees to the ground and raise your hands above your hand. You are under the arrest of Overwatch as an international criminal. We have been told to shoot if you resist.” She didn’t see where the voice was coming from. She tilted her head forward, slowly bracing her hands behind her neck.

 _One shot, one kill_. It was easier to believe while she held a gun. But that did not mean that she would lie down and allow herself to die, as Amelie had.

The man in front of her was on the ground before she had fully processed her own movement. Her knee snapped up and caught the woman on his left too, before the pain from the bullet in her calf had burned its way to her brain. She stomped down on her other leg, relishing in the crackle of the woman’s neck. Another flare of pain kissed her shoulder, and she stumbled as arms reached out to ensnare her wrists and ankles. The world tilted in front of her; she bit a hand that drifted past her mouth. Her whole right leg was numb now, crawling up her thigh so that she kicked out in an attempt to regain feeling. Her foot connected with something soft, there was a scream, and then the world was blotted out by an inky blackness.

There was a blue light, somewhere. It was just like one of her nightmares, except something about this one felt like peace.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ya'll I am SO SORRY for the lack of updates. Life caught up to me in a big way-the last few months have been more exhausting than ever, and it's been hard to find time to read, much less write. But I didn't want anyone to think I had abandoned this fic, so while this chapter is pretty short, it's hopefully something to tide you guys over at least until I can get back on schedule. Hopefully a Tracer POV chapter will help in that area ;) 
> 
> As always, my tumblr is hayniacstuck and I am in desparate need of widowtracer fans to talk to. Anyone is welcome at any time.

Widowmaker woke up. This was the first thing she noticed: she had the ability to wake up, so she must therefore be alive. Her head hurt like a _chienne_ , though.

She opened her eyes slowly, the light squeezing through her cracked eyelids in a particularly painful way, but she forced herself to look around anyway.

She was chained to the wall in a small room she didn’t recognize. A pattern. (Widowmaker hated patterns.) This time, the walls were metal instead of stone, and there was an absence of bars holding her in. Two metal doors faced each other at opposite ends of the rectangular room, without any discernible locks or markings from the inside. Something else was different too – something she didn’t immediately recognize, but became more aware of when she shifted her feet underneath her.

The room was vibrating, subtly. It was a low hum that barely disturbed the metal clasps on her wrists, but it was there. Widowmaker felt a cold, sick dread curl in her stomach as she leaned her head against the metal wall and closed her eyes. Her head buzzed with the contact.

A train. A damned _train_. That had to be where she was; it would explain the sensation of movement, as well as the lack of cells and length of the room. Overwatch was transporting her to some other location. Some other location where Reyes and Sombra didn’t know where to look. Somewhere with agents she didn’t recognize and couldn’t exploit.

Somewhere without Tracer. Did she exploit Tracer? Did she use and discard Tracer? Did she care? Escaping from her cell had felt like plunging into ice water after a dizzying hot shower: refreshing, cleansing, and completely herself again, and yet, and yet, and yet-

(Did she want to feel like herself? When she wasn’t numb with tranquilizers or the heady rush of a clean shot, who was she? Did she want to go back to that cell, where she couldn’t kill, couldn’t snipe or maim or swing away from anything, everything-)

 _“Putain!_ ” She hissed, slamming her hand to the metal floor. The impact jolted up to her shoulder, where pain seeped through her joints. She was wearing the same white outfit from earlier (how long ago was earlier? How far was she from where Talon expected her to be?), and peeled back to the cuffs to examine where the bullet had struck her.

The bruise was tinged blue/black with a yellowish ring, but there was no point of entry where a bullet could have entered. It didn’t even look like the skin had broken. Widowmaker frowned. The bullets must have plastic or rubber: hard enough to injure, but not to kill. But how did she collapse?

She reached one hand back (a difficult maneuver, considering the cuffs) and felt along her neck. Near the base of her skull was an indent surrounded by puckered skin. If she had to guess, it was where a tranquilizer had pierced the skin, probably while she was running. Or maybe one of those soldiers had jabbed it there while she was struggling. The rubber bullets had caused so much of a distraction that she hadn’t even noticed.

The door closest to her clanged open, and she quickly dropped her hands back into her lap. Two soldiers stepped into the car and locked the door behind them; they wore identical, non-descript uniforms and visors over their eyes. Each carried a gun.

“You’re being detained,” one of them said before Widowmaker could open her mouth. The voice was cool, female, emotionless.

“I could not tell, thank you,” she responded. The soldiers only stared at her. “Where am I being taken? Why am I on a train?” She asked.

“We are under orders not to give you any information,” the second voice said, sounding the same as the first. Identical, even.

Widowmaker squinted and scanned the soldiers’ forms. Besides wearing the same uniforms, they were the same height and build, with large lumps behind each shoulder.

“Omnics,” Widowmaker snarled as the realization settled in. “I’ve killed hundreds of your kind, and orchestrated the deaths of thousands more.”

“Then I’m glad we’re the ones holding the guns,” one of them replied before inclining its head towards the door. The other nodded, and they left, locking it behind them.

Overwatch must have a sense of humor about the situation then, or at least a sense of confidence. To guard her with the group she had been fighting since she joined Talon. They must be sure that they had her secured. She thumped one fist on the floor again, forcing herself to take deep, measured breaths. Her heartbeat crawled to a steady rate.

 _One shot, one kill_. The next move was to make a plan. They would have to give her food and water at some point, they’d have to change her clothes, they’d have to let her go to the restroom.

She could wait.

* * *

 

  
 _She could wait. She could wait._ Tracer was not good at waiting. Chronic impatience was a side effect of time travel, which made paying attention to Angela’s debrief that much more difficult. Tracer knew her accelerator wasn’t connected to her emotions, but she couldn’t help feeling that it hummed more loudly when she was anxious.

“-and we just want to do some routine checks, to make sure she didn’t do anything do you, didn’t plant something on you or in you.”

“I get it, Angie. I _do get it_ , but you have to believe me when I say that she wouldn’t have-“

“This is what I’m talking about, Lena!” Angela’s voice raised an inch above where it had been boiling for the past few days. “The fact that you’re even _saying_ things like that…” She closed her eyes and exhaled. “You know what position you’re in right now.”

Tracer felt a cup of dread pour down her spine, warming her face with irritation (and embarrassment, to a larger degree than she wanted to admit). She was well aware of her status in Overwatch after Widowmaker’s escape attempt two days ago. Commander Morrison had placed her on immediate probation, immediate surveillance, immediate lockdown and removal of her guns. He had argued for dismissal and a limit on her chronal accelerator, but Winston stepped in to call for an interrogation period first.

She didn’t regret anything. She had said as much to the Commander’s face, to the pointed displeasure of Angela, and Winston, and everyone else in Overwatch. It was only because she had worked here for so long that she hadn’t been fired already.

And Tracer _liked_ working at Overwatch. Loved it, actually, and had respected the chain of command and her fellow heroes accordingly since she’d signed up for the pilot training program.

“Lena,” Angela began again, her eyes wide and sympathetic. “I know…I know how you…felt about Amelie.” She paused to glance at someone who wasn’t there. Tracer’s fingers curled in on themselves. “It was harder for you than most. Seeing Widowmaker after so long…it’s confusing, it’s difficult for even me to understand.”

“I know Amelie is gone, Angela,” Tracer said.

“That’s good. That’s really good. I just want to know why you-“

“But Widowmaker isn’t a bad person,” Tracer interrupted. Angela opened her mouth, but Tracer steamrolled forward. “It’s Talon. She doesn’t want to do what they make her do. She doesn’t have a choice, they have these syringes that numb her emotions, they’ve been making her take them since Amelie was captured.”

“Then why would she go back to them?” Angela retorted. “If she hates them so much, why did she try to escape?”  
  
“I-I don’t know.” She couldn’t pretend it wasn’t something she hadn’t thought herself. Widowmaker could have lied about it all, she could’ve been using Tracer since the beginning. Whenever Tracer had thoughts like that, she jumped into a cockpit and did trick flips until she was too tired to worry about it anymore.

“I think it’s time to approach the situation objectively,” Angela continued, reaching across the table to lay her hand over Tracer’s. She wanted to wrench it back. “Winston and I will alternate in debriefing. We need to know what she said and what you told her. Morrison also insisted on us knowing where you are at all times.”

Tracer’s eyes narrowed and she lifted her head. “Are you going to make me wear a tracker?”

Angela bit her lip but shook her head. “For now, no. But you’re going to have an escort. And you’re not going to be sent on missions for a while. You’ll stay here and help me and Mei.”

Tracer opened her mouth, but Angela stood from the conference table. “It’s already been decided by the Commander. Trying to change it will only mean more consequences.” Tracer bit her lip and nodded, once.

“For now, get some rest,” Angela continued. “I’ll see again tomorrow, and if not, then Winston. Commander Morrison wanted to limit your visitors.”

“I understand,” Tracer murmured through gritted teeth.

“For your sake, I hope so,” Angela said over her shoulder before the door slammed behind her.   



	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not gonna offer any excuses...trust me...I know
> 
> But things have changed! I live in the UK now! I'm going to Oxford! I have a twitter! It's @hayniacstuck, just like my tumblr. Please chat with me about Overwatch, and haikyuu!!, and Jojo, and anything else.
> 
> This is a really short chapter, I know. I wanted to ease back into things, for both you and me, so the next will be longer. This is just to prove I'm alive and I haven't forgotten about this fic, as well as offer what I can in order to prevent myself from procrastinating any longer

 

She understood. She understood perfectly as she walked back to her room and glanced behind her before closing the door and sliding the lock. She understood as she hauled a backpack from under her bed and stuffed dollar bills into the front pocket. She understood as she dug through the bottom drawers of a cabinet pushed against the wall; Winston had given her the first prototypes of her pistols as a friendly gesture after the real things were finished. Tracer tossed a spare clip of bullets (only one necessary, when she could just rewind time back to a full set of ammo) after them, onto her bed.  
  
The most important question had been if she was going to have to wear a tracker. Tracer had already decided what she wanted to do before walking into that room. Carrying it out would but the difficult, but it wouldn’t be the most difficult thing she’d had to do.

She understood that she would most likely not be able to return to Overwatch if she was successful, and even if she wasn’t. She was fully aware that she did not understand why Amelie had run.

She understood that it didn’t matter, really, and that once she found Amelie, she could ask for herself.

* * *

 

  
Widowmaker couldn’t tell whether it was night or day on the train; only the omnics switching out every few hours marked that time was passing at all. She’d yet to find out where they were going, or how long it would be until they got there. The manacles driven into the wall were just as tight now as they had been days ago.

Sometimes she could feel the train turn. Her chains would swing slightly too far left, or the train would creak as the omnics adjusted their footing. This didn’t help her figure out where they were geographically, but she did know that the train had been creeping up an incline since the last omnic shift.

Food and water came intermittently, and she was only allowed bathroom breaks (via bucket, in the corner of the train, with one omnic behind her and another by the door) after she complained.  
She slept fitfully, chains too short to let her lie down.

  
The next time she woke, she could immediately tell that something was different. Though omnics didn’t always express emotions the way that humans did, they reacted to instructions and stimuli just the same.

There were three guards today, and they spoke in low tones to each other while Widowmaker watched with cracked eyes. The language wasn’t one she could interpret. It was a cousin of the bastion’s low beeps and drones, just peppered with more high-pitched popping and squeaking. An omnic language.

“I did not know omnics liked to gossip,” she said, and all three straightened.

“It is not of your concern,” the nearest one rasped before _beeeep_ -ing to its neighbor.

“Then why make sure I cannot hear?” She replied.

The omnics resumed whispering to each other. Widowmaker rolled her eyes and shifted back to facing the opposite end of the train car.

There was an abrupt, awful, scream of metal as the door she faced punched open and air burst into the train car. She slid across the floor, hissing under her breath as her hair lashed across her face. The omnics screeched to each other, guns clicking into place. Something blurred through the hole – something too fast for Widowmaker to see clearly.

 _A glow of blue. A blink of orange._ But it couldn’t be. Even Widowmaker, who knew impossibilities only because she naturally defied them so often, knew this was an impossibility.

Nonetheless, one of the omnic’s guns sprayed bullets towards the opposite end of the car. Widowmaker pressed herself against the wall, but it didn’t matter anyway – the omnic was already a smoking metallic mass. Its partner whipped around, but before it could complete the motion, it developed three holes in its forehead and slumped to the ground.

There was just no way.

But there she was, a neon disaster, grinning as she crossed the car to kneel next to Widowmaker. Their lips connected and separated (the thrill gone before it could be processed, her eyes still wide).

“Cheers, love!” Tracer chirped. Before Widowmaker could respond, a finger mushed against her mouth. “Not yet. They’ll have figured out I’m here by now. Get away from the wall.”

Widowmaker’s eyebrows drew together. “You do not _order_ me-“There was a pop and a rush of heat, and one arm came free from the chains. The links hummed red and orange, and Widowmaker reluctantly lifted her other hand so Tracer could get a clearer shot.

“Give me a warning next time,” she muttered, but Tracer only giggled.

“I think telling you to get away from the wall qualifies.”

Widowmaker stood shakily, rubbing the scarlet bands around her wrists. “What plan do you have for getting off this train?”

Tracer’s smile had an inverse relationship with Widowmaker’s scowl – one grew while the other deepened. “We’re going to need to time travel. Don’t let go.” She looped one arm around Widowmaker’s waist and pulled her closer. Widowmaker was a good deal taller, so when she looked down, Tracer’s face was just a few inches away. Warmth flooded her cheeks. Tracer’s hair was completely scuffed by the wind, her goggles tangled haphazardly, her chest rising and falling while she still fought to catch her breath. Widowmaker shrugged her arms around Tracer’s shoulders.

“Will it hurt?” She asked.

“I’ve never tried it with another person,” Tracer replied, and then they were torn from time and space.  
                                                                          

**Author's Note:**

> I still don't know French, so while the phrases I used were simpler this time and shouldn't have too many mistakes, please correct me if they do! It would be greatly appreciated.


End file.
